Questions About Counter

I was looking at the upgrades available for JSE capes and was stricken with curiosity about Counter +10%. I have a few questions:

1. Does Counter from items work even without having the trait as a Monk or Blue Mage beforehand?

2. Does the percentage of Counter correlate directly towards the chance to negate and retaliate an incoming autoattack, or is it some funky calculation? That is to ask: Does Counter +10% stop 1-in-10 attacks?

3. How does enmity work from Counter? I assume the negated attack would not see one's CE reduced. But does the counterattack generate CE from its damage?

4. Reading information on the Wikis before posting this, I see that only other total-negation effects (evasion, parrying, Utsusemi) will occur before Counter, and yet guarding occurs after. Where do shield blocks lie in the operational order?

I ask because I'm really curious now if Counter might function as a multiplier of -PDT% bonuses. Obviously it has its drawbacks: it wouldn't work when not engaged, it wouldn't work when flanked, and it does nothing against TP moves. But as a lot of folks seem to be making short work out of capping PDT and DT in general, if Counter might mechanically exceed those caps. It could also complement Spell Interruption Rate and enmity control.

1. I think it works without having the trait, not 100% sure though.

2. Afaik a counter hit also has to pass the accuracy check, if the counter hit would miss it doesn't counter at all. Other than that it's like you said, 10% equals 1 in 10 attacks getting countered with a cap of 80%.

3. Absolutley zero clue but if I had to guess I'd say it counts like a regular swing in terms of enmity.

4. also not sure but since a successfull counter negates 100% of the damage, assuming the enemy has no spike effects, I'd guess it has higher priority over blocking?

1: Counter gear does take effect without having the actual trait. Example, Sakpata feet have Counter, and I counter occasionally on PLD/BLU.

So far as I can recall, Dual Wield is the only form of Trait+ gear that won't give you the trait itself if you don't already have it.

2: already answered.

3: I went and tested this just now, and Counters are zero enmity, just like spikes effects. They cannot put you on the mob's hatelist, nor do they generate CE/VE.

Did 3 simple tests.
Test #1: Aggro'd a mob on PLD/MNK. Engaged a different mob. Used counterstance. Maintained Phalanx so I always took 0 dmg hits. Beat the snot outta said mob with counters, reducing it to below 30% HP. Used Atonement on it. 0 Atonement damage, showing the mob had less than 6 CE or VE vs me. Probably had 0.

Test#2: Basically the same as above, but I got on the mob's hatelist first. Did so by having my alt cast silence(1 CE) on the mob, then I cast protect on the alt()CE) then after they smacked my alt a bit I cast again, and the mob settled on me(alt lost their 1 CE making a tie, and I had acted more recently.

Countered the mob half to death, then used Atonement. Still 0 dmg. SO no CE was generated.

Test#3: This one was basically just another way to show that counters did not put me on the mob's hatelist. Aggro'd and countered again. Had my alt silence the mob(1 CE), then I used sentinel and palisade. The mobs stayed on the alt with 1 CE. So the counters did not put me on the hate list.

4: Well, guard is weird. Vs normal attacks, it just reduces the pDIF of the incoming attack by 1, significantly reducing the dmg. But iirc vs ws, it makes them miss(Maybe this has changed? It's been years since I last looked into it) Which makes.. no effing sense. (EDIT: I've been informed by the more currently MNK saavy that it doesn't make WS miss. Although apparently there used to be a bug that made WS guarded by MNK mobs display as misses, even though they still dealt the dmg..) So, normally, guard is kinda the same as shield blocks, a partial dmg reduction vs an incoming attack that has landed.

Shield blocks and guard likely fall into the same slot in the priority. They both require the hit to land before they can proc. But they can never occur at the same time either. Can't guard with a shield equipped, even if your mainhand is empty. I actually went out and tried to see if I could get this to happen. lol. But even with a low block rate shield, I never saw a guard proc even on unblocked hits. Took the shield of, and I got a few guard procs in short order.

If this is just asking if you can use counters as another layer of defense to reduce the number of hits/amount of damage you take, then, yes. But trying to express it as some sort of effective PDT is, kinda weird.

Also, this might be slightly off topic but, the talk of shield and counter reminded me of it.

A little historical anecdote about counter and shield blocks... Back in the day when defending against a counter, a shield block could proc on the counter itself, but rather than reduce the damage of the counter hits, it acted as if the counter had missed, preventing the counter from occurring and allowing the attackers original hit to go through normally. It effectively made Ochain PLD immune to counter. Was glorious. <,<
Old counter vs shield test post.
Unfortunately, this was apparently... not working as intended, as some time later SE ninja patched it on the test server, and then later the live servers. No patch notes or anything.
Nerfed
So today, shield blocks appear to have no interaction with counters at all, and I don't think you can even block the counter just to reduce the damage of the counter hit. Sucks cause counters hit freaking hard.

Do you remember if the hit did any damage? Maybe counter had a damage check instead or on top of the acc check and if it returns 0 the counter got canceled just like with a whiff.

That's good to know but disappointing.

You just didn't even take a hit. No damage taken, you hit goes through as normal. It acted exactly as if the counter had missed, or been parried.

The only way this mechanic was even discovered, was due to Ochain allowing players to hit 100% blockrate for the first time in XI history, and counters just... not ever happening at all. Otherwise you'd shrug it off as evasion and parry lowering the counter rate a bit.

That aside, I can't really test to confirm the damage check hypothesis since the effect doesn't happen anymore. But I can say that even against stronger, higher level, MNK mobs, no matter how hard they were hitting, as long as I was capping block rate, I wasn't getting countered. So I doubt it was a damage check, because non-zero blocked hits did occur. And were actually a lot more common back when, before phalanx+ gear existed. It's part of what made Ochain crazy back when. Cause you actually took enough damage on blocked hits to convert back into meaningful amounts of MP. <,<

Interesting if Guard makes WS hits miss. I had always assumed they were just really severely mitigated.

I am also not 100% sure that guard is just Pdif-1 and forget where that came from. Someone added it to bgwiki back in 2008, so who knows if it still works that way or honestly ever did.

Back on topic, there is a 99% acc check for monk's main hand now so counter+10 should negate (plus counter damage) 9.9% of attacks from the front.

Some of the weirdness with shield (and possibly guard) is probably due to the original implementation, where shield blocks were the same as parry (complete negation) and guard was pretty obviously reused shield code.

Edit: googling, I can't find notes about this change so maybe it didn't happen or maybe it was really early

So against anything where accuracy is capped, 10% Counter would only be about 9.5%, and anything where accuracy isn't capped, it would be even less?

See, that's exactly the kind of funky stuff I was talking about before.

Depends on your weapon, h2h acc cap for MNK is 99% now, so MNK would still have a 9.9% counter rate. For something like BLU it would drop to 9.5%.

I think OP is trying to implement counter into a tanking set for PLD, is the counter acc generally 99% now or only for MNKs or hand to hand weapons?

Sword is 95% acc cap, so assuming the PLD isn't punching things, yes 9.5% actual counter rate from +10 counter with capped acc.

Oh, right. I seem to recall hearing that was the case, suuuper early on. I guess they forgot to adjust that aspect in the counter checks after shield blocks changed, and it stayed that way for years and years.

Digging a bit, there's a note on this in Funkworks' History of FFXI. Much to my surprise though, it says the update was in 2005. I'd expected it to be in, like, pre US release or something.
So yeah, I find the suggestion that they failed to update the counter mechanics after making this change to shield block extremely convincing.

Yeah. I mean, I'm asking the questions for general knowledge, but it was browsing the augments for a potential JSE cape for Paladin that started the ole brain juices in the first place.

Some of the limits of Counter are pretty clear, but others aren't. I've even tried in the past tanking on my Blue Mage with a set Counter trait and Orcish Counterstance actively maintained. Before equipment, you can get 26% Counter on BLU. But I eventually came to the realization how much better off I was with Occultation and Sudden Lunge.

I was going through pages of that and searching for shield. Guess I stopped slightly too soon!

I got a bit curious about the current state of things for blocking and counters. I felt fairly sure that they couldn't be blocked anymore, even just to reduce the damage.

Went out to La Vaule S to test on my favorite MNK NM. He full times Orcish counterstance. lol.

With mastered PLD, and Shield mastery +5 i was getting... 13 TP per counter. Which is the same TP gain as from a single normal unblocked hit from this mob. So, I'm definitely not getting shield mastery TP gain from incoming counters. And there's no way my block rate isn't capped against such an old mob while using Stage 5 Duban.

I also tried taking off my shield, and observed roughly the same damage from counters. Small eyeballed sample, but a 60% change in damage as well as -5.2 from shield def bonus(after 35% PDT) should have been pretty noticeable if it was applying. So while this test was pretty sloppy, between this and the TP gain test, I'm pretty convinced that you can't block counters to reduce the damage on them. :/

C'mon SE. I get why they changed blocks preventing counters now. But why can't I even block the actual counter for damage reduction?

Apparently I had this one wrong. Turns out there was an ooold display bug that made WS guarded by MNK mobs(unsure if it affected players guarding) to show as missed even though the damage was still dealt normally, if reduced by guard. I assume that's the recollection I had floating around in my head.

Currently the damage is displayed normally, and guard does exactly the same thing on WS and normal hits.

Really, I should have realized. Battlemod can actually display guard procs on WS now, and I've seen them before. How such an old vague memory got priority over more recent experiences... /shrug. Brains are weird.

I think if you set counter on BLU you want to turtle up on all fronts. I'd use counter on top of occultation and sudden lunge, not instead.

augmented bathy choker +1 +10%
cornelia's belt +5%
and situationally you could also use genmei shield for +4% (and when you set counter, chances are it's that situation)
makes +19% from gear

Then you get +14% from setting orcish counter stance + asuran claws (setting a higher tier only returns 2% so imho not worth it)
casting orcish counter stance for another +10%
Makes +33% counter and if you don't mind the defense loss you can sub MNK and throw up counter stance for +45% so you're at 78%.


But if you want to go the extra mile there are additional options like Gleti head which also adds another 10% on lvl 30 if you have that and Genmei earring for another +1% but there are imho better options in the ear slot so I don't count it.
Ambu cape could add another 10%
I'm sure I forgot some options but the ones listed above can get you to +39% counter rate with gear alone

With all of the above you're already at ~63% counter on BLU and don't even need to sub MNK.

The problem is that on BLU, your effectiveness is tied to your spell loadout as well as your gear loadout. Both the stun from Sudden Lunge and the shadows from Occultation have to fail for Counter to even get a chance at kicking in. If you've already got two layers of defense, the third layer costing 15 Set Points and requiring constant buff maintenance probably isn't worth the extra damage you could be getting from setting and/or applying other spells in your repertoire.

But I suppose it's about the same as a Counter build on Paladin. You probably won't be using it against big, tough enemies, and there's no point against fodder. But there's a sweet spot in the middle where, when everything lines up for it, it could be a lot of fun.

Sadly, I don't have a ton of Counter gear just yet anyway. But I might start keeping my eyes open for it just for fun.